The outlook for modern-day Latin American women has changed. They work, look after the kids and are more independent. In the past 20 years, they have fully integrated themselves into the workforce and contributed to the region's economic growth.Read More »

LONDON, September 24, 2013 —A new World Bank and IFC report finds legal and regulatory barriers to women’s economic inclusion have decreased over the past 50 years globally, but many laws still hinder... Show More + women’s participation in the economy. Laws restricting women’s economic activity are currently most prevalent in the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.The third in a series, Women, Business and the Law 2014: Removing Restrictions to Enhance Gender Equality monitors regulations affecting women entrepreneurs and employees in 143 economies. This edition highlights reforms carried out over the past two years, examines the evolution of women’s property rights and legal decision making ability since 1960 and expands coverage to examine legal protections addressing violence against women.“The ideal of equality before the law and equality of economic opportunity isn’t just wise social policy: It’s smart economic policy,” said World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim. “When women and men participate in economic life on an equal footing, they can contribute their energies to building a more cohesive society and a more resilient economy. The surest way to help enrich the lives of families, communities and economies is to allow every individual to live up to her or his fullest creative potential.”“Our latest edition of Women, Business and the Law shows that many societies have made progress, gradually moving to dismantle ingrained forms of discrimination against women,” said Kim. “Yet a great deal remains to be done.”This report finds 44 economies have made 48 legal changes, thus increasing women’s economic opportunities over the past two years. Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, the Philippines and the Slovak Republic had the most reforms. Among the reforms, husbands can no longer unilaterally stop their wives from working in Côte d’Ivoire and Mali, the Philippines has lifted restrictions on night work for women, and the Slovak Republic increased the percentage of wages paid during maternity leave.The report finds economies in Eastern Europe and Central Asia have the most extensive lists of jobs women cannot do. For example, in the Russian Federation women cannot drive trucks in the agricultural sector, in Belarus they cannot be carpenters and in Kazakhstan they cannot be welders. These restrictions may have arisen from a desire to protect women, but can limit their employment options. The report shows economies with the most job restrictions on women have lower female participation in the formal labor force."Progress on gender equality under the law is accelerating," said Augusto Lopez-Claros, Director, Global Indicators and Analysis, World Bank Group. “Our data shows that over the past 50 years countries everywhere have started removing long-standing restrictions on women's ability to participate more fully in the economy. Although the progress has been uneven across the world, there is widespread recognition that the economic empowerment of women is crucial for competitiveness and prosperity."Between 1960 and 2010, more than half the restrictions on women’s property rights and ability to conduct legal transactions were removed in the 100 economies examined. Restrictions in three regions – Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and East Asia and the Pacific – were cut in half. While some restrictions were removed in South Asia and in the Middle East and North Africa, these two regions reformed the least.Another major innovation in the report is new data on the existence and scope of laws on two areas of violence against women: sexual harassment and domestic violence. Covering 100 economies, the data show that prohibitions against sexual harassment in the workplace are widespread – 78 economies have legislation and over half of these criminalize the behavior. Legislation on domestic violence is also widespread –76 economies have laws prohibiting domestic violence. The region with the fewest laws on domestic violence is the Middle East and North Africa.The report shows lower gender legal parity is associated with fewer women participating in firm ownership, while policies encouraging women to join and remain in the labor force are associated with greater income equality. Even though the report offers signs of improvement for women’s economic opportunities globally, it shows economies can do more to ensure women’s participation in economic life.About the Women, Business and the Law Report series:Women, Business and the Law measures how laws, regulations and institutions differentiate between women and men in ways that may affect women’s incentives or capacity to work or to set up and run a business. It analyzes legal differences on the basis of gender in 143 economies, covering six areas: gaining access to institutions, using property, getting a job, providing incentives to work, building credit, and going to court. The project provides a clear picture of gender gaps based on legal differences in each economy, but it does not capture the full extent of the gender gap, nor does it indicate the relative importance of each aspect covered. This year’s report was published by Bloomsbury Publishing.About the World Bank GroupThe World Bank Group is one of the world’s largest sources of funding and development expertise for developing countries. It comprises five closely associated institutions: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA), which together form the World Bank; the International Finance Corporation (IFC); the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA); and the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). Each institution plays a distinct role in pursuing the World Bank Group’s mission to fight poverty and improve living standards for people in the developing world. For more information, please visit www.worldbank.org, www.miga.org, and www.ifc.org. Show Less -

World Bank-IHME reports will help policymakers tackle health issues facing countriesWASHINGTON, September 4, 2013 — In the Middle East and North Africa, heart disease, stroke, and diabetes are causing... Show More + a massive amount of premature death and disability. People in Latin America and the Caribbean are living longer on the whole, yet they face increasing threats from chronic diseases. Mortality has declined in many South Asian countries, yet the number of deaths by non-communicable diseases and self-harm has skyrocketed since 1990.These are some of the findings released by the World Bank Group and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) in six regional reports as part of The Global Burden of Disease: Generating Evidence, Guiding Policy. The reports are based on the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2010 (GBD 2010), a collaborative effort of researchers from 50 countries around the world led by IHME at the University of Washington in the United States and supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.The reports explore changes in the leading causes of premature mortality and disability in different parts of the world and compare the performance of countries in a range of health outcomes. Individually, they document how each region is working to reduce health loss from most communicable, newborn, nutritional, and maternal conditions and what new challenges lie ahead.“The rapid shifts in disease burden place poor people in low- and middle-income countries at high risk of not having access to appropriate services and incurring payments for health care that push them deeper into poverty,” said Timothy Evans, Director of Health, Nutrition and Population at the World Bank Group. “The data in these new reports are critical inputs to the efforts of policymakers in countries towards universal health coverage that aim to improve the health of their people, communities, and economies.” The World Bank commissioned the first GBD analysis as part of its World Development Report 1993. Earlier this year, IHME presented GBD 2010 findings in meetings hosted by the World Bank. Bank officials saw how GBD analyses could be applied to the Bank’s work in support of countries and collaborated with IHME to produce six regional reports. All reports are available at www.ihmeuw.org/GBDpolicyreport.Some highlights from the six reports:Child mortality declined in sub-Saharan Africa as a result of decreasing mortality from communicable, newborn, nutritional, and maternal causes such as lower respiratory infections (down by 22%), diarrheal diseases (34% decline), and protein-energy malnutrition (17% decline). Despite signs of progress, diseases that primarily cause illness and death in children and mothers continue to dominate in the region. In the context of widespread and rapid economic growth in Africa, there also has been a 76% increase in road injury and a growing toll on human health. Report: www.ihmeuw.org/SSAfricaWith the population growing older, the leading causes of death have changed in East Asia and Pacific. Between 1990 and 2010, demographic changes contributed to the rise of non-communicable diseases and injuries. Ischemic heart disease (or coronary artery disease, up by 76%), lung cancer (86% increase), and diabetes (76% increase) saw dramatic increases. Similarly, rapid development contributed to rising health loss from road injuries (51% increase). Report: www.ihmeuw.org/EAsiaPacAs mortality declined in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, many non-communicable causes increased between 1990 and 2010. Ischemic heart disease (up by 18%), cirrhosis (up by 82%), and diabetes (up by 11%) increased. Alcohol use disorders are the cause of more early deaths and disability than two decades ago. Report: www.ihmeuw.org/EurCentAsiaNon-communicable diseases and conditions are a major cause of disease burden in Latin America and the Caribbean like never before. In this region, health loss increased from ischemic heart disease (up by 36%) between 1990 and 2010, as did depression (40% increase) and low back pain (57% increase). Report: www.ihmeuw.org/LAmerCaribIn the Middle East and North Africa region, non-communicable diseases such as heart disease (up by 44%), stroke (35% increase), and diabetes (87% increase) are causing unprecedented numbers of premature deaths and disabilities. Potentially preventable risk factors such as poor diets, high blood pressure, obesity and overweight, and smoking are contributing to the growing burden of non-communicable diseases in the region. Report: www.ihmeuw.org/MidEastNAfricaIschemic heart disease (up by 73%), low back pain (63% increase), and diabetes (104% increase) have grown to particularly dramatic levels in South Asia. Rapid development in the region contributed to a 58% increase in health loss from road injuries over two decades. In addition, self-harm rose in importance as a cause of premature death and disability in the region from 24th to 13th place between 1990 and 2010, increasing by a stunning 134%. Report: www.ihmeuw.org/SouthAsia“Rigorous data is essential to guide policies and programs that expand access to health throughout the world,” said IHME Director Dr. Christopher Murray, the lead author on the GBD studies. “Policymakers and others can use data at the regional and country levels to identify the best local solutions to health issues facing their countries.”Detailed findings for each country in all regions are available online in a series of country profiles and data visualization tools. IHME also is making available for the first time GBD data for every country in the world. Anyone can search by condition or country at www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/search-gbd-data.Building on the success of GBD 2010, IHME is expanding its network of researchers from around the world with expertise in specific diseases, injuries, and risk factors. Through this broader network, IHME hopes to strengthen the country-level assessments and provide cost data to make GBD updates even more relevant for policy decisions. Application information is available here.The World Bank Group and Health, Nutrition and PopulationThe World Bank Group is a vital source of financial and technical assistance to developing countries around the world, with the goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity. Improving health is integral to achieving these goals. The Bank Group provides financing, state-of-the-art analysis, and policy advice to help countries expand access to quality, affordable health care; protect people from falling into poverty or worsening poverty due to illness; and promote investments in all sectors that form the foundation of healthy societies.The Institute for Health Metrics and EvaluationThe Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) is a global health research organization at the University of Washington that provides rigorous and comparable measurement of the world's most important health problems and evaluates the strategies used to address them. IHME makes this information widely available so that policymakers have the evidence they need to make informed decisions about how to allocate resources to best improve population health. Show Less -

In a village in Tanzania, for example, women are now making clay pots and growing vegetables to sell at market. The work is generating income, but within the community, it is viewed as an extension of... Show More + women’s domestic duties and not as a breadwinner role.Almost everywhere, the focus groups described men remaining the primary income earners and decision makers, and the allocation of free time, responsibilities, and power being unequally distributed. Nearly one-third of the groups said domestic violence was common and reinforced gender norms.“Norms are changing, but the change is slow and incremental, and its pace does not always keep up with economic opportunities and development. As a result, women, as well as men, get excluded from opportunities perceived as gender-inappropriate,” said Carrie Turk, a World Bank gender specialist and co-author of the report. "Development programs can help alleviate these constraints, since change needs to happen on all levels to take effect: on individual, household and community levels."Lessons for development“The development community needs to think about where it is financing gender-sensitive projects,” said study co-author Maria Beatriz Orlando, a social development specialist at the World Bank. “In the `90s, a lot of women’s development work focused on traditional gender roles – a lot of the projects were in crafts or in food. We have to question how much jam can be produced.”“While respecting culture, we can also challenge these norms for the benefit of both women and men,” added Ana Maria Munoz,a co-author of the report, also co-authored by Patti Petesch and Maria Angelica Thumala.Creating gender-neutral learning opportunities could also open more doors for future generations of both sexes, the authors write. Education and laws that help reduce domestic abuse can also increase empowerment and opportunities for women.Laws and regulations promoting gender equality can promote change, but they must be well publicized and enforced. The study found that outreach and public understanding were uneven among the focus groups, particularly in rural communities. “In none of the sample countries did we find either men or women to be really well-informed of their rights, entitlements, or obligations with respect to key laws intended to promote gender equality,” the authors write.The World Bank’s workIn its work, the World Bank assesses the gender dimensions of development within and across sectors in each country where it has active programs, and it uses Regional Gender Action Plans to lay out proposed directions to ensure that gender and inclusive development are better integrated into country and regional programming.Gender is also a special theme of the Bank’s $49.3 billion fund for the poorest, the International Development Association. Its Gender Action Plan, started in 2007, has boosted attention to innovative programs to promote women’s economic empowerment. And the Road Map for Gender Mainstreaming directs more of the Bank’s technical assistance, projects, and programs towards giving women better economic opportunities.The new focus group study adds to a body of knowledge that includes the World Development Report 2012 and suggests that when communities find ways to relax norms, men’s and women’s individual and collective sense of control over their futures can increase – and reinforce one another. Show Less -

In a videotaped address, Kyte encouraged participants to forge effective partnerships, empower poor rural women, and create opportunities for women in agriculture, not just as farmers but also as scientists... Show More + and policymakers. She highlighted a fellowship program in Africa that has been opening doors for female scientists for several years."When barriers come down - barriers that prevent women from fully contributing on the farm, in the lab, in their homes, and in government offices - everyone benefits: food security increases, poverty drops, children are better nourished, and environmental stewardship improves," Kyte said."Advancing gender equality is not only the right thing to do, it's the economically smart thing to do, and it's also necessary in order to unleash agriculture's full potential for improving lives in developing countries." Show Less -

Working with larger-scale farming systems is one of many tools to promote sustainable agricultural and rural development, and can directly support local communities and smallholder productivity – but this... Show More + must be done right. When undertaken with appropriate safeguards and inclusion of small holders and communities as beneficiaries, large agribusiness can bring development benefits through economies of scale, market discipline, and accountability to consumers. Production at scale has the potential to lower the price for essential food; improve productivity and efficiency in the use of fertilizers and water; and enable investments in innovation that may be too costly for small farmers to adopt.However, large-scale land acquisitions pose certain risks. The World Bank Group is especially concerned that large-scale land acquisitions do not disadvantage smallholder farmers, who depend on land for their livelihoods. The World Bank Group does not support speculative land investments or acquisitions which take advantage of weak institutions in developing countries or which disregard principles of responsible agricultural investment.Working to protect the rights of land users, smallholder farmersThe World Bank (IBRD and IDA) interacts primarily with governments to increase agricultural productivity, strengthen land tenure policies and improve land governance. More than 90% of the World Bank’s agriculture portfolio focuses on the productivity and access to markets by small holder farmers. Ten percent of our projects focus on the governance of land tenure.Similarly, investments by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank Group’s private sector arm, including those in larger scale enterprises, overwhelmingly support smallholder farmers through improved access to finance, inputs and markets, and as direct suppliers. IFC invests in environmentally and socially sustainable private enterprises in all parts of the value chain (inputs such as irrigation and fertilizers, primary production, processing, transport and storage, traders, and risk management facilities including weather/crop insurance, warehouse financing, etc.). IFC due diligence and Performance Standards, which address issues ranging from environmental and social impacts, to labor practices, to assuring future livelihoods for existing users, apply in all cases. IFC’s Performance Standards were recently strengthened to address many risks associated with land investments and are widely regarded as best industry practice.IFC investments made directly in the agricultural sector have already delivered substantial economic benefits, including helping provide jobs for 37,000 people, including 11,000 women, and reaching 4.2 million farmers (equivalent to 20 million people supported). In addition, IFC-invested companies are expected to source more than $4.6 billion of goods and services from local companies and contribute more than $287 million in tax revenues in FY12.Having a strong anchor organization or supply chain intermediary achieves a multiplier effect in adopting new practices, setting standards, and expanding market access. For example, IFC provided $74 million in loans and equity to Jain Irrigation, India’s producer and distributor of drip irrigation equipment. Jain Irrigation introduced drip irrigation to India’s agriculture and has grown to become the world’s second-largest player in the micro-irrigation industry. The use of Jain’s drip-irrigation technology, which allows water usage to be cut by 40 percent, has resulted in water savings equal to the annual water consumption of more than 10 million households. In addition, it has tailored its business model to include the poor—creating a supply chain of 25,000 small farmers, 90 percent of whom work with less than one hectare of land. The use of drip irrigation has also led to efficiency gains that have raised annual incomes for small farmers by up to $1,000.Working for policies that recognize all forms of land tenureThe World Bank supports and consistently recommends government policies that implement systematic land surveying and titling programs that recognize all forms of land tenure: public and private; formal and customary, including those of pastoralists or others with weak formal rights; collective and individual, including women’s’ rights; and rural and urban. At the same time, respect for customary and traditional land rights should be looked at dynamically, focusing on the shortcomings (e.g. women’s access to land) and striking a balance between what needs to be preserved and what needs to be changed.The World Bank has supported government’s efforts to strengthen land policies and administration systems in member countries for over four decades. Since 1990, the Bank has provided finance of US$2.7 billion to more than 60 land administration projects around the world. At the request of individual countries, we provide support through information and research, and by working with governments to implement sound policies.As of August 2012, we have 23 projects under implementation supporting improved governance of land tenure with IBRD/IDA commitments of US$ 964 million. There are 12 projects in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, 6 in Latin America and the Caribbean, 3 in East Asia and the Pacific, and one each in Sub-Saharan Africa and in South Asia. In addition, there are 23 projects which include a land tenure component (13 of which are in Sub-Saharan Africa). For example:For many years in Nicaragua, the lack of an institutional and legal framework made it difficult for indigenous and ethnic community groups to have their rights and natural resources formally recognized and their territories demarcated and titled. Under the Land Administration Project, the World Bank helped to demarcate, title, and register 1 million hectares of land in the country’s Atlantic coastal region, and prepare territorial management plans with participation of the indigenous and ethnic communities and their leaders and authorities to guide future development efforts.In Indonesia, the Bank supported post-tsunami recovery efforts in Aceh through rapid community mapping and land registration and titling, introducing the concept of joint titling and gender recording. A total of 222,628 land title certificates were distributed to land owners after the tsunami, out of which 63,181 were given to women either individually or as joint owners with their spouses.In Bolivia, the Bank helped update the 1952 land reform law, establish a new tenure regime for indigenous people, and modernize the land administration system. As a result, 2.8 million hectares of land were surveyed and titled – of these, 588,000 hectares were for indigenous peoples’ communal territories.Land governance – working to facilitate transparency and accountabilityIn addition, the Bank and several partners have developed the Land Governance Assessment Framework (LGAF), a diagnostic tool to assess the status of land governance at country level in a participatory process that draws on local expertise and existing evidence rather than on advice from outsiders. To date, LGAF assessments have been carried out or are under way in 13 countries (eight of which are in Africa).Helping women achieve equal treatment in obtaining land rightsWomen often have often difficulties in proving they own the land they work and live on. The lack of clear property rights denies them an opportunity to earn more for example by renting the property out or using it as collateral for loans. The Word Bank has helped women in Ethiopia, Honduras, Indonesia, Kosovo, Nicaragua, and Vietnam better understand their rights and secure clear land title to their properties, enabling them to get more out our their most important asset.As Tashegu Woretaw, an Ethiopian widow from Gola Kebele tells, “I was not really interested in putting any long-term investment in the land. After getting the certificate, I planted eucalyptus and also prepared part of it for grass for fattening small stocks and oxen.”Securing access to land for the poorSecuring access to land is critical for millions of poor people. Modern, efficient, and transparent land tenure policy is important in reducing poverty, and promoting growth and sustainable development. Security of property rights is central to preserving livelihoods, maintaining social stability, and increasing incentives for investment and for sustainable, productive land use.For example:In Malawi, inequitable access to arable land, combined with insecure land tenure, unsustainable farming practices, and intense competition for resources have resulted in chronically low incomes and persistent poverty. To address these challenges, the Community Based Rural Land Development Project was launched in 2004 to generate greater opportunities for the poorest of the Malawi’s rural poor. By 2010, 15,000 poor families had access to land. Gross margins per hectare had increased ten-fold for hybrid maize from the pre-location phase.In Brazil, under the Land-Based Poverty Alleviation Project families formed groups that negotiated directly with willing sellers to purchase suitable properties. They then obtained financing and technical assistance to establish themselves on or near the land and to improve the productivity of the acquired properties. Thanks to the project, more than 55,000 poor rural families gained access to about 1.2 million hectares of land.In Bosnia and Herzegovina, systems for the registration of property rights had been in disarray since World War II and made worse following the 1992-1995 war. Informal development of large areas occurred because of the difficulty in getting permission to build or occupy property. It was very difficult to complete basic real estate transactions, develop property or to borrow money based on property as collateral. The World Bank-financed Land Registration Project contributed to a significant reduction of backlogs in property registration and more efficient customer service in many courts. Now 80 percent of all transactions are resolved in five days or less and mortgages are registered within a day in 16 of the 47 courts, including Sarajevo.Grow AfricaThe World Bank is an active participant in Grow Africa, which is a partnership platform to accelerate investments for sustainable and inclusive growth in African agriculture, coordinated by the African Union, New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), and the World Economic Forum, under the umbrella of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP). The first Grow Africa Investment Forum was held in Addis Ababa in May 2012. It attracted 270 top-level leaders from global, regional, and national businesses, African and other governments, international organizations, and civil society and farmers’ organizations. A total of 116 companies participated, including 49 African and 47 multinational companies plus 20 from other regions, such as Asia and the Middle-East. More than 60 companies signed letters of intent reflecting intended private investments of US$4 billion in African agriculture. This number reflects both the strong interest of the private sector to invest in African agriculture, as well as to do so in a sustainable and inclusive way supported by Grow Africa.Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land More recently, the World Bank Group has actively supported preparation and endorsement (May 2012) by the Committee on Food Security (CFS) of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (“the VGs”). The Bank is actively engaged with multiple partners (UN agencies, bilateral donors, civil society organizations) in supporting the implementation of the VGs at the country level through wide-spread dissemination, capacity building, financial support to policies and projects that enhance the governance of land tenure according to these guidelines. The World Bank Group considers these VGs as a major international instrument to guide specific policy reforms, since it provided an agreed framework for action, broad participation, and monitoring outcomes.Recognizing the increasing interest in farmland, and the potential associated risks, the World Bank is working with partners to “retrofit” principles of responsible agricultural investment to 40 agribusiness investments to determine how application of the principles would have impacted the results.The Principles for Responsible Agro-Investment (PRAI)In 2010, the United Nations and the G20 asked the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and the World Bank - in consultation with a broad range of stakeholders - to generate principles that could be used by both foreign and local investors and to help governments address the needs of vulnerable groups, especially small farmers. The PRAI process is led by the Committee on Food Security, and global consultations on the principles are continuing.The Bank is working with governments and stakeholders through a number of concrete investment projects to operationally translate the Principles of Responsible of Agro-Investments and the Voluntary Guidelines into concrete sustainable and inclusive public-private partnership models which we expect will have significant positive effects on how governments facilitate private sector investments and how the private sector structures them. Grow Africa represents an African-owned, representative platform to share and discuss these operational models. Show Less -

Making Women Count Good morning everyone. Madam Secretary, Jim Clifton, Ladies and Gentlemen.It’s a great pleasure to be here today to address one of the key challenges of the 21st century: achieving... Show More + gender equality. I share a deeply-held conviction that gender equality counts for societies and economies to make progress. It counts because it’s the right and fair thing to do. Simply put, a person’s opportunities should not be determined by whether they are born male or female.It also counts because gender equality is vital for growth and competitiveness of countries. When countries value girls and women as much as boys and men; when they invest in their health, education, and skills training; when they give women greater opportunities to participate in the economy, manage incomes, own and run businesses – the benefits extend far beyond individual girls and women to their children and families, to their communities, to societies and economies at large. Just look at some of the numbers:Women make up 40 percent of the global work force, and 43 percent of the agricultural workforce. Across the developing world, there are 8 to 10 million formal small and medium-sized women-owned businesses – and those numbers are growing. Today, women are more than half the world’s university students. In a third of developing countries there are now more girls in school than boys. Evidence shows that when women have greater control over household funds or agricultural resources, it can have significant payoffs. In Brazil, for example, when family income goes into the hands of the mother rather than the father, I know this from personal experience, a child’s chance of survival is 20 times greater. In Ghana, ensuring that women farmers have the same access as men to fertilizer and other agricultural inputs would increase maize yields by 17 percent. So this isn’t just about giving women more resources. It’s about giving women their fair share. It’s about giving half the population the opportunity to lead better, and more productive lives – and, at the same time, raise productivity and prosperity, break the cycle of inter-generational poverty, make institutions more representative, and advance development prospects for everyone. At a time when the world is looking for additional sources of growth, there’s an untapped market out there that everyone should invest in more: women.At the Bank, we’re promoting gender equality through financing. This past fiscal year, over 80 percent of the Bank’s lending and grants – more than $28 billion – was allocated to gender-informed projects in areas such as education, health, land rights, access to credit, financial and agricultural services, jobs, and infrastructure. We’re also supporting gender equality through knowledge and analysis – we’re generating new ideas, testing new approaches, evaluating systematically what sorts of interventions really work. We made Gender Equality the subject of our 2012 World Development Report. The Report makes clear that one of the fundamental challenges for tackling all these issues is more and better data and evidence. Before we can solve a problem, we need to understand it. We need to be able to evaluate systematically what sorts of interventions work, which don’t, and why. But data and evidence are also important to make visible the lives of women and girls. Their experiences can teach us so much. But only if they are counted.For many developing countries, we don’t have the data to help us understand just how big these gender gaps are, or how to address them. It simply doesn’t exist. This is a particular problem when looking at women’s economic opportunity. Take agriculture – a hugely important sector for women, particularly in poor countries: If you want to compare how many women in different Sub-Saharan African countries use fertilizer to help grow their vegetables, in order to evaluate where best to target scarce development funds – sorry, there’s no information for that. Part of the challenge of collecting sufficient data is methodology: many surveys, including at the World Bank, address households – but not women’s opportunities specifically. In addition, many national statistical agencies in developing countries lack the resources and know-how to gather more data. And then there’s a greater challenge of strengthening country systems. As experienced in my own work on maternal health, even seemingly simple data, such as births and deaths, can sometimes be difficult to capture. Basic indicators like maternal mortality remain underreported because too many women in poor countries never come into contact with health facilities or official statistical systems.So how do we start to close the gender gap – the gender data gap? First, we need to work together. We’re partnering with the United States government, UN Women, and the OECD on the Evidence and Data for Gender Equality Initiative to push existing efforts for comparable gender indicators on education, employment, entrepreneurship, and assets.Second, we need to invest in gathering new data and evidence. For example, In April, the World Bank Group and Gallup presented findings from the Global Financial Inclusion Index – a new joint project with support from the Gates Foundation. It’s the first public database that consistently measures how men and women in 148 countries are engaging in financial activities – saving, borrowing, making payments, and managing risk. The World Bank Group has established Women, Business, and the Law – a global database which tracks and measures legal and regulatory constraints to women’s financial access. Third, we need to be open and transparent about what we know and what we don’t know. It’s the best way to determine the gaps in our knowledge and to fill them.Finally, if we are to make significant and lasting change, we need to direct the data back towards developing countries. By making country data accessible, we can help empower men and women in the real world to become agents of change. This is important, because it’s only with sufficient country demand for better gender equality that we will ultimately succeed.That’s why I’m excited to announce today that the World Bank is launching a new Gender Data Portal – part of our Open Data Initiative. Visitors to the Gender Data Portal will be able to access data from the World Development Indicators, national statistics agencies, and UN databases. You’ll find results from surveys, analytical work, and reference materials covering girls' and women's employment; access to productive activities; education; health; public life and decision making; also human rights; and demographic outcomes. The portal’s data visualization tool allows users to interact with the data. And we’ll keep it updated and respond to feedback.It’s an important step forward – bringing together the multiplicity of data sources on gender, and allowing anyone with an Internet connection to see how patterns are evolving across countries and regions over time. As part of the World Bank’s broader open data initiative, visitors will be able to access a whole range of data on Bank operations and financing, so they can access the latest figures on our own performance on gender mainstreaming – and hold us to account.When you visit our new site, you’ll also see that there are appalling gaps in country coverage and frequency. You won’t find data on gender wage gaps in developing countries because comparable data doesn’t exist across developing countries. You won’t find enough data measuring women’s voice and agency beyond women’s representation in national parliaments – there are bits and pieces, but the gaps are still huge.Today, let's commit to moving forward on making women count. One year from now, let’s commit to seeing progress in data availability in two areas – women’s economic opportunities, and women’s voice and agency – for at least 10 countries where that data is currently missing. We’ll need to make greater efforts and investments in building statistical capacity in those countries to collect the relevant data. We will need to focus on strengthening country systems, too. When we succeed in those 10 countries, we will expand those efforts to 10 more countries. And then ten more ever more quickly.I’m very excited to be working with the U.S. State Department and Gallup, who do such great work in this area and are so committed to closing the gender data gap. Together, we’re calling on more development partners to support countries in this effort.Before I hand the podium over, please let me pay tribute to the next speaker for her tireless efforts for gender equality across the world. Secretary Clinton staked her claim as an advocate for global women’s issues a long time ago. In 1995, as first lady, she gave a speech at a UN conference in Beijing that many of us still make reference to today. She said that "Women's rights are human rights." And that: "Every woman deserves the chance to realize her own God-given potential. But we must recognize that women will never gain full dignity until their human rights are respected and protected." These are powerful words that helped galvanize a global movement for women's rights. They are no less relevant today. On a personal note, I’d like to thank Secretary Clinton because I wouldn’t be here today without you. Thank you so much. Show Less -

MR. MILLS: Well, thank you very much for joining us for this closing press conference. Our participants will each make an opening statement and then we'll take... Show More + your questions. If I can ask everyone to please turn off your mobile devices or put them to vibrate, we would appreciate it. Chairman Belka. MR. BELKA: Thank you. As we are late, I am not going to be very descriptive about the meeting of the Development Committee. You know the agenda. The discussion was very rich, centering around the social safety nets, the private sector involvement in growth initiatives, as well we discussed modernization of the World Bank. However, one thing that is obvious, it took so long because all the delegates took the opportunity of this Development Committee meeting to express gratitude and admiration for the achievements of the outgoing President of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick. So, I give you the time to ask questions both to him and Christine Lagarde. Please. MR. MILLS: Very good, thank you. President Zoellick. MR. ZOELLICK: Okay. Well, I'd like to welcome Marek Belka as the new Chair of the Development Committee. I have great respect for what Poland has achieved over the past 20 years and also respect for Marek's service to his country and to Europe. So, I'm delighted that he can share his country's and his own experience with the Development Committee. And I want to thank Christine for a fine stewardship of the IMF at what's clearly a critical time for the world economy. The next meeting of the Development Committee will be in Japan with a new President: Jim Yong Kim. I'm sure he'll do a great job. And I also want to extend my thanks to the members of the Development Committee. I am pleased our shareholders have endorsed the World Bank Group's efforts to boost support for efficient and fiscally sound social safety nets, including conditional cash transfers, public works and school feeding. At international meetings, we hear a lot about global financial safety nets, and we need to focus equal attention on the human safety net. As we know, there are dangers that, when institutions are too big to fail. But let's remember that beyond the talk of financial systems and of regulations and of firewalls, it's people who are too important to fail. The shareholders also want us to continue to assist developing countries with multi-pronged approaches to deal with higher and volatile food prices. I’m pleased our shareholders have support for the moves for more innovative and stronger partnership with middle-income countries – home to 70 percent of the world's poor. A key element of this is the development of infrastructure to boost future growth, including through Public-Private partnerships. Shareholders endorsed the Bank's knowledge agenda, whether it be on safety nets or global public goods or the South-South agenda. The global recovery depends on proper incentives for private financing, and the World Bank Group has been a leader in developing public policies to encourage private sector innovation, investment, and job creation. And our private sector arm, IFC, has done a particularly good job in innovative financing, technical assistance, investments, and mobilizing others. At the end of the day, the best safety net is a job. So, finally, I'm pleased that Ministers endorsed our modernization agenda with its focus on results and openness and accountability. They commended the work to date and called for the momentum to continue. It's more vital than ever that support be continued to help developing countries to navigate the tricky road ahead. So, I'd like to just close with a special word of thanks to the World Bank Group staff, including our talented and diverse Senior Management team. They're superb people who bring ideas and energy and commitment from around the world to our service to our clients and shareholders. It's been a privilege to serve with them and I wish them the very best. Thank you. MR. MILLS: Thank you. Managing Director. MS. LAGARDE: Thank you very much. Very briefly, because this is late in the day and it's a day for Bob, not for me. I will just begin by saying how privileged I have been in the last nine months to work across the road from Bob and I thank him for the learning experience that this has been, including to this very last moment when he was congratulated and highly supported by his constituencies. Just very briefly, what the IMF focuses on in terms of low-income countries, and in particular developing countries in general is, number one, making sure that we have the right tools and the right analysis specific to the low-income countries and this is something that we will continue to work on going forward, because the low-income countries are facing specific risks, if they have done reasonably well, including in the post-crisis period, much more so, actually, than the advanced economies. They have the share of risks, as well, and they have clearly the risk of the external shock coming out of the advanced economies in crisis. They have less room to maneuver because they have used much of the buffers that they had before entering into the crisis. They have less scope to use policies, and they have the longer-term challenges that Bob has been dealing with and addressing during his tenure in the last five years: Make inroads in reducing poverty, generating more inclusive growth, developing infrastructure, and all the rest of it. Now, what are the priority actions for the IMF and the international community? It is moving forward on three priorities. First of all, helping countries manage global uncertainty and volatility more effectively, and to do that we need to have the right tools. We will be this summer looking at all the tools that we use for low-income countries, making sure that they are rightly adjusted to very specific needs. We also need to have the right resources on the right terms, that is, concessional terms, and we've received a boost to that effort this week, but more is going to be needed. Second, we need to push the quality of growth. It needs to be inclusive, it needs to be associated with strong social safety nets, and it needs to be creating jobs and reducing poverty. This topic was discussed yesterday at the Rio+20 breakfast, as well. And third, clearly, we need--and that's more of an internal matter, but it really means quite a lot to the low-income countries, as well. We need to push our governance reform at the IMF and make sure that the quota reform of 2010 and the governance reform actually delivers on the credibility of the institution, it's representativeness, so that it secures the voices of not only the low-income countries but more generally all countries appropriately in accordance with an appropriate share of the global economy. So, those are the directions in which we are working to make sure that we serve our constituencies in that particular respect. MR. MILLS: Thank you very much. Yes, right here in the first row. QUESTION: Thank you. Daniel Jiang with China's Xinhua News Agency. I have a question for President Zoellick and one question for Madam Lagarde. President Zoellick, what is your insight on the process of modernizing multilateralism in a multipolar world you propounded on several years ago, as well as evolving of the Bretton Woods system, and how can the Bank facilitate the process. And for Madam Lagarde, what do you hope to achieve at the Tokyo meeting? Thank you. MR. ZOELLICK: Well, as for your question to me, I think the heart of it is to focus on clients and recognize that the diversity in the developing world requires customizing approaches, but increasingly, we're able to draw from across the developing world and bring experience and insight from some developing countries to other ones. And as an institution, it's important that we recognize that good intentions are not sufficient. So, we have to be rigorous in focusing on results. We also have to be accountable, and to be accountable, it helps to be open. So, I think one of the key aspects of the modernization agenda are the initiatives we've taken in terms of open information, open data, open research. And the more we can expand that not only to the governments around the world but take it all away to communities with the use of different technologies that now enable us to engage social accountability. And one of the initiatives that we took this week in starting an effort for a Global Partnership for Social Accountability, I think is a good example of that. I think on the notion of customizing, one of the topics that came up in today's discussions was the key need for the Bank to continue to adjust to the special needs of middle-income countries. These are the countries where you still find 70 to 75 percent of those living under $2 a day. They have special challenges. And as in the case of China, as you know, we made that adjustment by working with DRC and China on a report to examine the possibilities of future structural reforms as part of China's changing growth model. In other countries, we'll use a combination of knowledge and financing. But I think that will be an ongoing dynamic for the institution. MS. LAGARDE: All right. You asked me what are my expectations or my goals for the Tokyo Annual Meetings. I have four objectives. The first one is to make sure that we have programs in place for some of the Arab transition countries. Second objective is to enhance and tailor to low-income countries our surveillance tools. Third is to get as close as possible, and if possible, the finishing light of the quota and governance reform. And fourth, I want to replenish the Poverty Reduction and Growth coffers. Thank you. MR. MILLS: Yes, Sandrine. QUESTION: Sandrine Rastello, Bloomberg. Mr. Zoellick, I'd like to follow up on the comments you made about China and working together with China, especially in the light of the contribution that China just--or that we expect China to make for IMF resources. As you know, China has become a lender of its own in Africa. I was wondering whether we see the future of the World Bank lending alongside China, and because I don't think we've seen many cases or examples of that so far, and what it would take, especially in terms of safeguards for lending. MR. ZOELLICK: So, Sandrine, you mean lending with China in third countries, or investing in third countries? Yes. Well, I think you're going to see an increase of outward investment, not only from China, but if we're looking over the medium and long term from other emerging market economies. And that's an area where IFC, our private sector arm, is already working to develop partnerships. I think there is also a key aspect in terms of the knowledge and experience transfer. Just to give you an interesting one, Indonesia was bringing some of its experience with community development after difficult situations to Haiti. So, this is much more than a Chinese issue. Brazil--I was here this past week with the head of the Brazilian Development Bank and we're talking about cooperation with the African Development Bank and areas of agriculture development. So, I think it's much broader than the Chinese side. I will say, though, that one other aspect that my colleague Justin Lin has encouraged, and I think has got very interesting prospects is that as China has a population that, over the next five years, there will be more people leaving the labor force than coming in. So, there's a need to move up the value chain, and that means increases in productivity that will warrant additional wages which warrants a higher living standard. Justin estimated the share of about 85 million workers in low-wage manufacturing in China. In all of Africa, South and North, there's about 8 to 10 million. So, some of those jobs--and one of the Party secretaries in Guangdong, Guang Yang has emphasized this. Some of these jobs are likely to move out of China. Now, some of them will move elsewhere in Asia, Southeast Asia, but Justin actually visited a recent operation in Ethiopia where there are plans for substantial numbers, even by the end of this year and over a few years probably manufacturing employment of about 25,000, which would be the same as the number they have in China. Now, to create this, we have to create an environment of ports and infrastructure and roads and energy and other things that China has had as part of its growth model. So, one of the reasons that I've been so adamant about the need to connect with the middle-income countries is that not only do they face development challenges, but I don't want the Bank to be hollowed out. I think that those countries will be very important in the future of the Bank in helping a lot of the poorer countries, because you can already see with trade and investment and even foreign assistance flows. As I noted in one of my recent remarks, last year, a conservative estimate of the traditional foreign assistance from new donors was about 15 billion. That's about 15 percent of the 100 billion that developed donors make. For our IDA process, we not only got contributions but a number of developing countries, including China, prepaid their IDA credit. So, that's one reason we're able to get a record number of 49 billion. So, there are huge opportunities. And what it just underscores is if you think about the issues that Christine was dealing with in terms of growth and macroeconomic stability, if you think about the Rio+20 issues and environment, frankly, it's going to be true in the security area, we want to draw more to bring these countries--not only China, but all the middle-income countries--as effective beneficiaries and contributors to the international multilateral system that the United States and Europe and Japan created in the first 20 years after World War II. MR. MILLS: Thank you. To the gentleman right over there, in the fourth row. QUESTION: This is Asit Mishra from Mint Newspaper, India. This is to Mr. Zoellick. The G-24 countries have expressed concern over falling development finance in the World Bank. So, this is happening at a time when your sister organization is able to garner some 430 billion for a fund. So, how do you see it? Do you see that it's lack of interest in development finance and poverty reduction among the member countries? MR. ZOELLICK: Well, I'll let Christine explain, I think, the benefits of the additional funding or backstop for the IMF, but I think they're designed for the global economy, and that would certainly include developing countries, and obviously this is part of an overall effort that's also done by the Europeans on their own behalf, but the World Bank also had a capital increase, the first one in 22 years. Our equity-to-loan ratio is about 28 percent. So, we've got some significant ability to expand, even with our current equity. I did suggest in the meetings that I think we need to continue to be creative about other ways we could support countries such as India. For example, when I was in India, we talked about a public-private partnerships infrastructure facility. It might draw some government money from the Indian government, from the World Bank Group, but also from other private partners. But to do so, we'll need perhaps to use the IFC approach to those projects as opposed to some of the things with the traditional IBRD approach. As you may know, we increased the single borrowing limit for India, made an exception. I personally think that India's credit should allow us to expand that more. Another tool that we could use and is used in the case of India is that if some of the reserves that countries hold are in the form of IBRD bonds, which actually have better returns than some of the things that they invest in, that allows us to expand the lending. So, that's another tool. And one of the things I briefed the Development Committee about is when, in the autumn of last year where financial markets were particularly in a risky situation, a number of emerging markets came to us and said, "What's most important to us is have access to large amounts of credit, regardless of whether you have to adjust the price or maturity. And we--with our current capital account we could expand that considerably if we do some flexibility and maturity in pricing. So, there's a lot of tools that one can use either from the IFC or the IBRD side. India is also in a transition stage with IDA, and some of the types of things that--where countries made contributions to the Fund are similarly the type of things one might be able to do in an IDA account where you have long-term credits at very modest interest rates. But again, I think they're slightly different. I mean, you want to be careful with the apples and oranges, because they're a backstop facility often done by central banks in the case of the Fund. And so, the idea is to have them there but not necessarily to draw on them. And what we're talking about here are ways that you can actually put investment funds to work on growth strategies. MR. MILLS: Is that fair? Okay. Yes. Lesley. This is the last question. QUESTION: Lesley Wroughton at Reuters. Bob, I wanted to find out from your discussions over the last few days what are the biggest concerns for the low-income countries as far as the spillover effects. I mean, we know the IMF is saying they're not seeing a slowdown in the low-income--in Sub-Saharan Africa, but what are you hearing? From the Finance Ministers' meeting, they were saying that they're pretty afraid of how this could really set itself into the economies. And then, for Ms. Lagarde, as the negotiations get underway for the next governance reforms, including the formula and then moving into--I think it's the 15th review--what do you think are the issues at stake here? I mean, the emerging markets want more say. The Europeans don't want to lose further power. They want to obviously hold onto something. What are the issues that you think that the membership needs to focus on to get the deal done? MR. ZOELLICK: Well, Lesley, as for your question to me, just realize this is a slight difference from your focus, but I think what we've been trying to stress is growth is one of those things that's not a zero sum; and so if you have the emerging markets in developing countries growing, that benefits developed countries and other developing countries. So, two-thirds of global growth has come from developing countries. So, it's in everybody's interest to continue their growth. I shortened my initial remarks, but what I've tried to emphasize in these meetings is that, in addition to the macroeconomic stability, which is very important, it is important for developed and developing countries alike to focus on the structural reforms, the microeconomic reforms that will drive future growth. And indeed, the Chair of the IMFC, Tharman of Singapore, made this point very well, how the fiscal adjustment needs to focus on the foundations for future growth. Now, more particularly, and I think Christine and the IMF staff have made this point: Some of the emerging markets have less space and so they have less fiscal movement and, in some cases, depending on their monetary policy, they have less flexibility if things turn down. A point that Pascal Lamy of the WTO and I have emphasized is we have some worries in the trade finance area, driven in part by the deleveraging of European banks, many of which were very active in trade finance, combined with some of the Basel rules, which have been changed but, in my view, still use as their examples more consumer finance and mortgage than the evidentiary basis for trade finance, but we will help develop the evidentiary basis for that, and that's particularly because for when you have a credit squeeze, it tends to hurt the smaller countries and the smaller banks and the smaller businesses, and those are ones that are obviously important for some of the future development. And particularly, if you're trying to build future growth models, it would probably be the intra-African trade as opposed to the African commodity trade with others. So, that's a second area. Third, it depends on the clients. The fragile states are obviously, by definition, fragile. So, they're worried about anything that could shock the system. There's a worry about oil prices, if you're an oil consumer as opposed to oil producer. And if you're a middle-income country or low-income country, I pick up a very strong interest in the infrastructure agenda, which is why I just touched on it briefly, but I think there's things that we started to do at the Bank, not only with our own investments but with public-private partnerships and really to try to make that a bigger deal flow, and what would be appealing is if we could then combine it with the private capital markets, as we're starting to do with a fund that IFC and Singapore are putting together. So, it varies a lot by market. MS. LAGARDE: Okay. On your question about governance, quota, formula, I take reforms one step at a time. So, my focus at the moment is make sure that we implement the 2010 reform, for the Tokyo Annual Meetings. Then, we have the January 2013 deadline. We've begun the discussions about the formula review of the quota. That will take its course, its time, its discussions. Everybody wants to have a bigger share of the same pie, so there will have to be gives and takes. And the 15th review will be in January 2014. So, we have a little bit of time. MR. MILLS: Very good. Thank you very much. [Whereupon, the press briefing was concluded.] Show Less -

MR. MILLS: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our World Bank Group press conference for the 2012 Spring Meetings. Joining me this morning is the President of the World Bank... Show More + Group, Robert Zoellick, who will have an opening statement and then take some of your questions. If I could please ask everyone when they ask a question to identify themselves and your organization; and once again, I am sure you have been asked, but if we could have our mobile devices switched off or to "vibrate." So, President Zoellick. MR. ZOELLICK: Thank you, Rich. Welcome, and thanks to all of you for coming. This marks my last Spring Meetings as the President of the World Bank Group, so I would like to begin with a few words of thanks to the Ministers who have supported us and worked with us; to our Executive Board, who have labored hard to help our Management team to modernize the important multilateral institution; to the excellent Senior Management team that I have been proud to help build and to lead; and to the World Bank Group staff in Washington and around the world. They are motivated, they are committed, they want to make a difference, they are a tremendous asset, and we have been able to draw the best now from 170 countries. This has been a pretty busy five years, so I suppose my tenure at the World Bank Group has had three phases--a turnaround from a time of some trouble; quickly moving into faster and more flexible, large-scale support for our client countries across the food, fuel and financial crises--in financial terms alone, about a quarter-of-a-trillion dollars; and the start of the modernization of the World Bank Group for the future. That ongoing modernization effort will be a large part of my presentation to the Development Committee later this week and my discussions with our Governors. With the first large recapitalization of the IBRD in over 20 years and two record-breaking IDA replenishments totaling more than $90 billion, I am pleased to turn over a well-resourced Bank with a AAA rating. Yet we always need to think ahead about how to mobilize resources--for the growing interest in IFC and private sector development, for the poorest, and for the changing needs of our middle-income clients, which are still home to three-quarters of those living on under $2 a day. Our Modernization Agenda is driven by our focus on clients, listening to their priorities, as opposed to an old top-down approach, and modernization involves a rigorous focus on results, openness, and accountability. So our initiatives for open information, open data, and open access to knowledge may turn out to be the most important legacy of the past five years. These steps are key to democratizing development, and these steps lay the foundation for expanding social accountability, fighting corruption, and building better governance. Last year, I proposed that the World Bank and others should recognize that investments in civil society and good governance are as vital as investments in roads, factories, and clinics. So I will be pleased to announce later today the formation of a new Global Partnership for Social Accountability that will provide support to civil society organizations in their work on social accountability. Now, much of what you will hear over the next few days will deal with the ongoing shock waves of the financial crisis--issues of macroeconomic stability, fiscal and monetary policies. That is certainly important, but it is not enough. Countries, both developing and developed, need to focus on the structural reforms that will be the drivers of future growth; otherwise, the world will keep stumbling along. The World Bank Group will be emphasizing the structural growth agenda. Structural reforms and changing growth models fit with our recent major reports such as the China 2030 Report and the Golden Growth Report that looked at Europe. You will also encounter structural growth in our priorities for infrastructure, especially public-private partnerships; social safety nets, to protect human capital in a volatile and uncertain world; gender, so that countries can gain growth opportunities from empowering all of their people; and financial inclusion, including at these Meetings, a first-of-its-kind report on measurement to access financial services that will show that three-quarters of the 2.5 billion people living on less than $2 a day are shut out of access to banking. Developing countries have provided two-thirds of global growth over the past five years. These are no longer charity cases; they are vital to the world economy. But of course, they face huge challenges, too. So it is the World Bank Group's aim to keep focusing the world's economic leaders on growth--not just stability; on human safety nets--not just financial safety nets; and on modernizing multilateralism so that all 188 of our shareholders can work together for their common interest. Finally, I had an opportunity to talk to Jim Kim after his selection as my successor. We will have a chance to meet shortly after the Spring Meetings on the transition process. I think he will do a great job, and I wish him and all others associated with the World Bank Group every success. I am pleased to take your questions. MR. MILLS: Yes, Sudeep? QUESTION: Sudeep Reddy with the Wall Street Journal. I was hoping you could address the European crisis from two angles. One, you previously noted that European countries had bought a lot of time with liquidity measures. I am curious what you think about how they have used that time and what they need to do next; and more broadly with emerging market countries, how are they faring with the shock waves from Europe, and is there anything in particular they should be doing now given the potential for another round with Spain? MR. ZOELLICK: Well, on the first one, I think the euro zone in particular and the European Union is going to be walking a very fine line. First, as you noted, with the anxieties late last year, I think the ECB's extraordinary actions were appropriate, but I think some misled themselves because they only bought time, and the time has to be used. I think that, as the IMF has pointed out, on the one hand, the future of the euro zone depends on actions of individual countries, particularly the steps they take for fiscal consolidation and, as I have emphasized, the steps they need to take for structural reforms and future growth. It is very difficult to take those steps in a no-growth environment, so it has to be balanced with steps that might be able to support demand and longer-term changes of growth. So this week, I tried to make some suggestions on the supply side and ways in which the single market could also further deepen integration to support growth. Now, again, as the Fund has pointed out, the banking system also remains under significant stress, and at the one hand, you need the banks to build their capital; on the other hand, what we have seen is that if the banks build their equity ratios by shrinking, as they by and large have been doing, that is going to put a stress on credit contraction and undermine the basis of growth. So I think the debate understandably reflects the fact of trying to balance these issues, but I think we are now in a phase where, after the ECB provided very attractive financial resources to a number of the banks to be able to buy government debt, as we have seen in various newspapers--I think your own today, as I saw one story--they are about at the end of that point and limit. So I think further actions are going to be called for, and the point I keep emphasizing, wherever it is around the world, is not just to focus on the austerity and macroeconomic stability measures, but you need to do this in a context of growth, in part because we have to face the political economy issues. So, as I have emphasized, the real countries that are critical because of size at this point are Italy and Spain. You have governments that are taking strong actions. It would certainly help if they got some support from some of the types of things that I and others have talked about so as to help with growth and the politics of reform. As for your second question, the deleveraging process in European financial institutions has certainly begun. I tend to agree with I think the IMF report and others that said that there is more to go. We have seen the effects, differential effects, around the world. I just came from East and South Asia. You have definitely had a pull-back in some of the project lending and sale of some of the assets in East Asia. A number of the Asian banks have stepped in, so it has not really had a significant contractionary effect. Starting late last year, I again worked by my friends at the EBRD and EIB and EC to try to reactivate the Vienna Agenda because I have been most concerned about the Southeastern European and the Balkan countries. And there, working with the banks, we are seeing the contraction. So far it has been orderly, but it is a good example of trying to get ahead of the curb, Sudeep. I was talking about this late last year, and people did not yet see the numbers, and as you saw the first quarter with the BIS numbers, you started to see this contraction. And I was actually pleased--through the IBRD, we were able to expand our commitment over the next couple years by about $4 billion, IFC another $2 billion, so our total, I think, is about $27 billion. I think that is an example of the types of things you need to do, frankly, even in the months ahead to get ahead of some of these problems. North Africa has clearly been affected by this, and this is again the political implications, because for a number of the North African countries, Europe is a very important export market, so it is important. I was with the Tunisian Finance Minister yesterday, and I am going to meet them again--as they undertake these difficult reforms, they need to get support from us and others along the way. And an area that Pascal Lamy of the WTO and I have been watching particularly closely is trade finance. A lot of the European banks were big players in trade finance, particularly the French banks, so you are seeing some shrinkage of that. In the areas, what I am most concerned about--and by the way, this is where the new capital rules from Basel III are going to have to be watched very closely; the Basel Committee took some steps to alleviate some of the changes that they had put in, overly stringent, in my view, but now we are trying to gather some data with the WTO and others to make a stronger case for easing some of the strictures they have--because what I am most worried about is a place like Sub-Saharan Africa, where I suspect that the exporters of major commodities to the U.S. and Europe will still get trade finance, but if you are a small country, if you are a small bank, if you are a small client, if it is intra-African trade--which should be the future of growth--those are likely to get squeezed. So, again, what I try to do in these meetings, Sudeep, with my G20 colleagues, because we see all these marketplaces, is to try to anticipate some of those issues, and those are some of the ones that I am focusing on. And then, the last one, of course, which is implicit in your question, is that we are not out of this mess yet, so if you have a more seismic event because of failures of management, that is going to hit everybody hard. It is still a fragile economy, as we and the IMF have pointed out. MR. MILLS: Yes, the woman in the second row, please. QUESTION: Yes, Antonella Ciancio from Reuters. We would like to know how concerned are you with Argentina's move to nationalize the country's leading oil company, and if this somehow threatens to further isolate the country. Thank you. MR. ZOELLICK: Well, I think it is a mistake, and I think it is a symptom that we have to watch out for of, under economic pressure, whether countries will move to more national, autarchic policies, respond more to populism, respond more to protectionism. So I think it was the wrong thing to do. MR. MILLS: Thank you. Yes, Howard? QUESTION: Hi, Bob, and thank you. Howard Schneider with The Washington Post. On the Arab Spring, I was just curious--Madame Lagarde laid out what is basically now a stalemate between the IMF and Egypt over support there, and I was wondering from your perspective, to what degree you think political uncertainty in those countries is holding up the type of support you feel needs to come from the outside to get their economies back on track. And then, secondly, briefly, what is your advice to Kim on transition? What are the mechanics of that going to look like, and what are you going to be able to do to help him in the door? MR. ZOELLICK: Well, on the first one, Howard, it varies a lot by country. So let's take Tunisia, which I referenced with Sudeep. You know, Tunisia has gone through an election process. They have an Islamic-based government. The government seems to be stressing the continuation of the policies that the prior interim government focused on, and those are policies we are trying to do everything we can to support--not just basic financing, but policies of inclusion, because you have had sort of a growth model that didn't pay enough attention to people in the west and central part of the country--trying to focus on some of the youth unemployment issue, and--very nicely with the agenda we are setting on openness and social accountability--when we did a Development Policy Loan, they accompanied it with a series of changes to try to open up their process. And I think it is not only good politics, it is good economics, obviously, to have the society feel that they are engaged in the process. But the Tunisian economy is still under significant stress; it has lost tourism; it has lost some of the effects of exports to Europe. So IFC, our private sector team, has also been doing investments in there. So, in the case of Tunisia, this is not going to be done overnight. They are going to face a tough year. But I think it is in everybody's interest to try to support them if the government stays on the current path, because again, looking at this from a bit of an economic history point of view, I think the North African transformation is going to take a while, but what I saw happen in East Asia and elsewhere is that countries that undertook the reforms become models for others. Morocco has had a fast-paced evolution as opposed to revolution. They are making a series of reforms, so we are trying to support them, again, on the openness side, the investment side, the private sector side. We are trying to support Jordan. Jordan is going through a combination of political and economic reform. In a country like Libya, they have the resources. There, we have been trying to work with some partners in a difficult security environment to help create the capacity for basic financial management and other activities. So, the big one obviously is Egypt, which you referred to, and here, as I suspect from what you have said that Christine mentioned, they not only face an economic and financial challenge, but they are in the process of a political transition. And I understand that there will be a need to be able to base the legitimacy of whatever economic relationships they have on the Fund and the Bank with the people who will be exercising power under the new Constitutional arrangement. So I think that that does slow up the process. Life is full of twists and turns. That is kind of the facts of life and the reality. There are things that I think the interim government can do to create a better environment for this. We have kept doing investment lending, and we have tried to focus some of the investment lending in Egypt on some of the sectors in need, but the bigger policy loans that we would do would depend on the macroeconomic issues that the IMF is addressing; and frankly--at least it has been my guidance--they will also be based on some of the openness and social accountability issues that we have seen in Tunisia and other countries. And that, I think--that is also important because I think you are going to be going through a political transition process, and the more open it is, then, whoever is elected in this year or next year or others I think will have a better sense of engagement with the economic changes in Egypt and the relationships with the World Bank. So this is one of the things, I think--we have also had to learn lessons from the Arab Spring. Economic growth alone is not enough. It has to be inclusive. And frankly, the more we can emphasize the things I have been talking about, about openness and social accountability, I think that is the future direction of the Bank as well as these countries. You asked a second one--oh, on Dr. Kim. Well, I have been through a lot of transitions in my life, so I have some experience with them. We tried to centralize a team to avoid the standard problem of the 500-page briefing book by focusing on some of the issues that will come up first. I think these Spring Meetings are timely because we will get a sense from the Governors and the Board about some of the issues that would be of nature to be a continuation--some of the things that I have talked about in this Modernization Agenda which has both internal and external aspects. And beyond that, I always think that as you are turning something over, you have to actually have some degrees of restraint. You know, he will be the person in charge. I happen to believe that change is good for institutions as well as me, and it is good to have a fresh person come in. So we will try to explain where we think some of the issues are. He certainly has a lot of perspectives, I am certain, from the tour that he took around the world and the discussion with the Board. So I am certain that by the time he takes office, he will have a pretty good feel for the challenges ahead. MR. MILLS: Yes, right over there, to the gentleman with his hand up--no, to the gentleman. Thank you. QUESTION: Larry Elliott, of The Guardian. In your five years at the Bank, what do you consider to be your biggest success, and what do you consider to be your biggest failure? MR. ZOELLICK: Can I hold on the second one? [Laughter.] MR. ZOELLICK: Well, I tried, Larry, briefly, in the opening, sort of anticipating this question, to say that in my own mind, I have seen these three phases. So, first, when I came into the Bank, as for those of you who have covered it, it was a tumultuous period. And so I had the challenge of a leader trying to turn around an institution. And to the credit of the institution, the best way to get out of some of the internal strife was to focus people on the mission--that is why people came to the Bank--and we were able to do that relatively quickly. We had some complicated issues to deal with in governance and anti-corruption and others where Paul Volcker and others helped. Second, before too long, we had the food and fuel crisis start to hit us in late 2007, so I am particularly pleased that sort of a combination of my international experience and kind of reading what was happening in the market, we moved quite quickly, and I think if you talked to people in the food security community, they felt that the Bank was more agile than it might have been in the past, but--and in addition, we start to see this as an opportunity to invest in agriculture going into the future. And then, as I have mentioned, in the financial crisis, doing about a quarter-trillion dollars of support is not only important financially, but it was important to how we designed a lot of it. So the fact that in trade finance, Lars and the IFC team leveraged our financing to keep a lot of banks in the market. I mentioned the Vienna Initiative. In Indonesia, we organized with the Asian Development Bank, the Australians and Japanese, a backstop proposal. So part of my point here is that it is not just financing; we need to be able to leverage it and kind of innovate it in innovative ways, and I think we were able to do that, including some things that I hope will become seeds of very important future growth, like this Asset Management Company which is a subsidiary of IFC, where we are now tapping the sovereign funds and pension funds, and we already have $4 billion of money that the Bank would have never seen going into African equity markets. So it is not only the response in financial terms, but it is also the innovation. And then, as part of that, it goes to this modernization phase which I think has just been begun, and there, as I mentioned briefly in my remarks--and here, I credit some of my team, Caroline Anstey, Sanjay Pradhan--together, we decided this focus on really opening up the Bank as an institution was key to not only development, but frankly, having a healthier Bank. And so an Open Information policy, it is the first among multilaterals, based on an Indian and U.S. Freedom of Information Act--this Open Data Initiative is just going to--I have already seen it--it is going to drive a whole new way of doing policy, because we are making this accessible with mobile phone technology in any country around the world, so we are going to have a much more interactive process. And just to connect this to a little bit of the transition debate, Larry, it was interesting that--and I am not saying this was any of the three candidates--but some others were saying: Oh, the Bank is doing too many things. It must focus on these three things. In my view, that was a mistake that elitist economists made 20 years ago, where they said "We know what developing countries need." And maybe it is because of my private and policy background--my approach has been fundamentally different. It says let's focus on the client; let's hear what the client needs, and then let's take the innovation from the world and apply it so, and then, in the process, we can learn with the client through an open process about how to do it better. So I think--I am sure you have encountered this with The Guardian, but I have encountered it at university campuses – is that you know, the Bank is still a big, multilateral, Washington-based institution, but the more you open up an institution, it is the best antidote to conspiracy theories and better policy. Pardon? QUESTION: [Inaudible; no microphone.] MR. ZOELLICK: Well, I'll let you be the judge of the failures; how about that? [Laughter.] MR. MILLS: Yes--thank you--to the gentleman right here. QUESTION: Thank you. IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde just said that low-income countries have to deal with lower aid resources. I would like you to elaborate a little bit more specifically on Latin America, if you have figures. And I would also like to know if the World Bank is concerned about the rise of protest movements and more social demands in different countries, even the Occupy Wall Street movement here in the United States, in Europe, and all this situation. MR. ZOELLICK: Well, on the first one, I guess the way I would approach the concerns for low-income is not just in certain countries but across countries, because one thing a lot of people have lost sight of is that two-thirds of the people living on under $2 a day are in so-called middle-income countries. I was just in India, where I met with women with a Self-Employed Women's Association. These are extremely poor women. So one of the challenges for the Bank is getting people to recognize that you are going to need to deal with poor people in a variety of different countries. Now, foreign assistance is clearly a piece of that, and it’s under stress. By and large, if you look at the OECD numbers, the countries have sort of generally kept up what they were doing. But I guess my suggestion on that goes to some of the things we have said in modernization. Take a country like the United Kingdom, which has maintained its effort to reach the 0.7 percent of GDP under difficult budget circumstances. It is a heroic effort. They, the Australians, Canadians, and others have done good work on this. But they need to show value for money, so this goes right back to the Results Agenda. And this is where some of the things we are trying to do to have evidence-based learning about what works and doesn't work--I think it is something Dr. Kim is interested in--this will be very important for the future. But another point of it is, one reason that it is important to draw the middle-income countries into the multilateral institutions is about a conservative estimate of the foreign assistance from the emerging borrowers, or the emerging countries, was about $15 billion last year. That's about 15 percent of the total, and it is probably a conservative estimate. And recognize, part of my view is you’ve got different sources of funds. You are also going to have investment funds. So the rise of China and the increase in commodity prices has probably been one of the best things for Latin America. The challenge, however, will be for Latin America to use that--and that is one of the things I will be talking about with the Governors--as a broader basis for more inclusive growth. So I tend to--I gave a speech last year where I talked about "Moving Beyond Aid," and the idea was not that we can overcome that today, but we need to move beyond kind of a charity model to the notion of investing in human capital, in infrastructure, with developed and developed countries, and in some ways, the best test is Sudeep's opening question--what are people most worried about today--Europe. And if two-thirds of the global growth comes from developing countries, we have to change people's mindsets. These are potential poles of growth. I just met yesterday with the African Governors. What are they interested in? Energy. Infrastructure. Regional integration. So those are the elements that we need to focus on. And I guess the last point on the poorest--the world is an unpredictable place. We are not going to change that. So people who believe they can control this price or that price, I wish them--well, I don't wish them good luck--but anyway, it is not going to work. What we should be doing, however, is making sure that every country has an effective social safety net, and we had a function on this yesterday, because we have learned a lot from developing countries about how to do this in a cost-effective way. The Bolsa Familia Program in Brazil, the Oportunidades in Mexicos--these are done for half of one percent of GDP. Trust me, if the U.S. Congress could get their entitlement programs down to any remote degree of that, they would be pretty happy; and yet they cover 15 to 20 percent of the people, and they provide a ladder up. So, and Ethiopia has a different model. So we at the Bank have helped extend conditional cash transfer programs to about 40 other countries. So we had the Philippines Secretary here yesterday, and they have expanded to 3 million families. So to me, the message for aid is not just the aid number but its effectiveness, and for the poorest, let's focus on basic safety nets for every country to deal with the volatility and uncertainty, because the other lesson we learned is if you wait until the crisis, it is too late. MR. MILLS: Okay. I think we have time for one more question. Yes, we'll go to the gentleman in the back, please. QUESTION: Hi. I am Bernard Busuulwa from Uganda. Now, Robert, I would like to know--you talked about the pending problems with trade finance among African exporters. I would like to know what is your first advice to central bankers in Africa who are terribly challenged in getting their banks to increase access for the exporter, and pro-poor growth in cross-border trade, especially at a time when their economies are also feeling the heat of the euro zone stress and weakness in the American economy. MR. ZOELLICK: Well, my first advice is not necessarily to the African central bankers; it is to some of, the Basel and developed world central bankers that, as they develop these rules, build back in feedback loops, because as sure as we are sitting here, they are going to find ways that over-constrict--it is the way the pendulum works--and I am most concerned about the effect of over-constriction on poor countries and developing countries. And in the area of trade finance--something that Lamy and I have talked about--part of the problem is they put in capital requirements and they don't have very good evidence, but frankly, the evidence we have is that it is a pretty short-term loan, and, it’s a pretty - it tends to get repaid. So my first start is with the developed world. But secondly--again, I would not focus so much on the central bankers--there is a huge opportunity in Sub-Saharan Africa to remove border barriers, to create more integrated markets. So--you are from East Africa--I visited a one-stop border place that we helped open up--I think it was actually Kenya and Uganda--and it had gone from two days for goods transporting to two hours. And this does not require huge sums of money. We now have the systems. We have worked with some private sector firms to develop the software on this. And it means sort of systematizing the process. Then, if we can combine that with infrastructure development so, whether it is roads or railroads or ports or electricity, to be able to strengthen it. So you are right--at least, I think you are right--by saying that subregional integration--and I would focus on sub-regions--East Africa, West Africa, Southern Africa, Central Africa--is the way to really start to drive a potential for growth. And I just keep coming back to this, because when I read most of the press accounts of these meetings, everything is focusing on the macroeconomic/fiscal/monetary. Fine. I am not denying that. But you are not going to ever deal with this problems unless you create sources of growth, and there are sources of growth in Africa, and I see it with private sector firms being interested in it, but Africans have to create the right enabling environment. MR. MILLS: Very good. Thank you very much. Show Less -

Washington, April 16, 2012 — World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick today congratulated Dr. Jim Yong Kim for being chosen to become the 12th president of the development institution and offered... Show More + his support in ensuring a successful handover for July 1. “I am pleased to work with Jim Yong Kim during the transition. He is an impressive and accomplished individual. Jim has seen poverty and vulnerability first-hand, through his impressive work in developing countries. His innovations in health-care have helped to save numerous lives. As President at Dartmouth College, Jim has had to take tough managerial and financial decisions while running a large, multidisciplinary organization. His rigorous, science-based drive for results will be invaluable for the World Bank Group as it modernizes to better serve client countries in overcoming poverty.” Show Less -

WASHINGTON, April 16, 2012 - Dr. Jim Yong Kim today released a statement in response to his selection by the World Bank's Executive Directors as 12th President of the World Bank: “I am honored to... Show More + accept the Executive Directors’ decision to select me as the next President of the World Bank Group. I am delighted to succeed Robert Zoellick, who has served with excellence and distinction during the last five years, and I am grateful to the Bank’s member countries for the broad support I have received. I have spoken with Minister Okonjo-Iweala and Professor Ocampo. They have both made important contributions to economic development, and I look forward to drawing on their expertise in the years to come. It is befitting that I conclude my global listening tour in Peru. It was here in the shantytowns of Lima that I learned how injustice and indignity may conspire to destroy the lives and hopes of the poor. It was here that I saw how communities struggle to prosper because of a lack of infrastructure and basic services. It was here that I learned that we must raise our sights to match the aspirations of those most excluded. And it was here that I learned that we can triumph over adversity by empowering the poor and focusing on results. As President, I will seek a new alignment of the World Bank Group with a rapidly changing world. Together, with partners old and new, we will foster an institution that responds effectively to the needs of its diverse clients and donors; delivers more powerful results to support sustained growth; prioritizes evidence-based solutions over ideology; amplifies the voices of developing countries; and draws on the expertise and experience of the people we serve. My discussions with the Board and member countries point to a global consensus around the importance of inclusive growth. We are closer than ever to achieving the mission inscribed at the entrance of the World Bank - “Our Dream is a World Free of Poverty.” The power of this mission is matched by the talent of the World Bank Group staff. May this shared mission embolden our efforts to end the disparities which too often diminish our shared humanity. Let us work together to provide every woman and man with the opportunity to determine their own future.” Show Less -

WASHINGTON, April 16, 2012 - The Executive Directors met today to select a new President of the World Bank Group. The Board expressed its deep gratitude for Mr. Robert B. Zoellick’s outstanding leadership... Show More + and his dedication to reducing poverty in its member countries, the core mandate of the World Bank Group. The Executive Directors followed the new selection process agreed in 2011 which, for the first time in the Bank’s history, yielded multiple nominees. This process included an open nomination where any national of the Bank’s membership could be proposed by any Executive Director or Governor, publication of the names of the candidates, interviews of the candidates by the Executive Directors, and final selection of the President. The Executive Directors selected Dr. Jim Yong Kim as President for a five-year term beginning on July 1, 2012. The President is Chair of the Boards of Directors of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA). The President is also ex officio Chair of the Boards of Directors of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), and the Administrative Council of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). We, the Executive Directors, wish to express our deep appreciation to all the nominees, Jim Yong Kim, José Antonio Ocampo and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Their candidacies enriched the discussion of the role of the President and of the World Bank Group’s future direction. The final nominees received support from different member countries, which reflected the high caliber of the candidates. We all look forward to working with Dr. Kim when he assumes his responsibilities. Dr. Jim Yong Kim is currently President of Dartmouth College. A U.S. national, Dr. Kim is a co-founder of Partners in Health (PIH) and a former director of the Department of HIV/AIDS at the World Health Organization (WHO). Before assuming the Dartmouth presidency, Dr. Kim held professorships at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. He also served as chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, chief of the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and director of the François Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Kim was awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship (2003), was named one of America’s “25 Best Leaders” by US News & World Report (2005), and was selected as one of TIME magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World” (2006). He was elected in 2004 to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences—one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine—for his professional achievements and commitment to service. He has published widely over the past two decades, authoring or co-authoring articles for leading academic and scientific journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, and Science. Born in 1959 in Seoul, South Korea, Dr. Kim moved with his family to the United States at the age of five and grew up in Muscatine, Iowa. Dr. Kim graduated magna cum laude from Brown University in 1982. He earned a medical doctorate from Harvard Medical School in 1991 and a Ph.D. in anthropology from Harvard University in 1993. He is married to Dr. Younsook Lim, a pediatrician. The couple has two young sons. Show Less -

Policy makers under pressure can get preoccupied with the fixation of the moment. For the eurozone, that idée fixe has been “the firewall”. How big is big enough? Who contributes and how?Now that the eurozone... Show More + finance ministers have exhausted themselves with a multilayered package of hundreds of billions of euros, the debate will go global at this week’s spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The next preoccupation will be how many more hundreds of billions of euros should be pledged to the IMF. It will be Firewall II: the Sequel.I beg to differ. Not with firewalls exactly, but with the preoccupation.The survival of the eurozone now depends on Italy and Spain. They are the countries that are too big to fail – or to rescue. Extraordinary action by the European Central Bank has lowered the interest rates that Italy and Spain pay on their debt, but not solved their problems.In one sense, the much-badgered Germans are right. The fates of Italy and Spain depend on the steps their governments take to cut spending, reduce debt, strengthen banks and make structural reforms. Firewalls offer reassurance to markets, but the governments’ action, their political support and the ECB’s liquidity will be decisive.The firewall preoccupation distracts from the fundamental issue: what should the EU do to help Italy and Spain retain political support for reforms? Structural steps are painful for any government. They are devilishly difficult without growth. Reforms can disrupt an economy for a time as investment, business and workers adjust.In Italy, Mario Monti, prime minister, has begun an exemplary combination of fiscal consolidation and reforms of pensions and labour markets. But unemployment is rising. Will Italy sustain the politics of reform without supportive EU policies? Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s prime minister, has set a similar course, but even modest concessions on the path to reduce the deficit, combined with 23 per cent unemployment and challenges in elections and on the street, have prompted a rise in Spain’s borrowing cost. The economics of adjustment and the politics of reform would be easier if Italy and Spain could be boosted by European growth.Yet as one European told me, economics is a branch of moral philosophy in Germany, so do not expect expansionary demand policies to trump rectitude, discipline and belt-tightening. There is, however, a supply-side growth alternative: strengthening investment, the single market, and the EU itself.Instead of quarrelling over firewalls, Europeans should add just a fraction – say €10bn – to the capital of the European Investment Bank. Under current conditions, the EIB may actually have to reduce lending. Instead, the EIB could use more capital to borrow and then invest to support structural reforms, showing Spaniards and Italians that their sacrifices will draw productive investments. The EIB is now even led by a talented German, Werner Hoyer, from the governing coalition. President José Manuel Barroso of the European Commission should also demand disbursement of the billions of euros of structural and cohesion funds that sit on its books while poorer parts of Europe go wanting; find the logjam and break it.The single market – the very fibre of EU integration – could also come to the rescue. Although goods move freely in the EU, the service sector in many countries – including Germany – could open up more. Labour movement is also far more limited than in a true single market. Whether the cause is language, habits, matching jobs with workers, or cost of relocation, now is the moment to overcome the hurdles and advance the true unification of the EU. Show people who want to work that the EU wants them, too.The combination of fiscal and structural reforms, EIB and EC investments, the opening of service markets, and easing the movement of workers will pay dividends. Mr Monti has travelled to Beijing to show China’s sovereign investment fund that Italy is becoming a good place to invest. That makes more sense than lobbying the Chinese to add to firewalls, especially if the EU itself invests and makes the single market more attractive.Firewalls have their purpose. But this debate risks becoming a distraction. Europeans and their partners need to keep their eye on the strategic Schwerpunkt: helping Italy and Spain with growth and the politics of fiscal consolidation and structural reforms that will boost business, competition and jobs. The ECB has done its work. The other institutions of the EU need a burst of activism on investment and strengthening the single market to preserve and secure their union.The writer is World Bank president. Show Less -

In palatial rooms at the Berlaymont, Brussels, EU finance ministers have been discussing how to save the Eurozone and balance growth with austerity. Across the globe in Mexico City, G-20 ministers have... Show More + been trying to save the world economy by strengthening financial systems. In New York at the General Assembly, representatives have been rallying to muster resolutions to denouce violence in the Middle East. Where in the corridors and halls of power are they talking about women's rights? The answer is easy. In side meetings, rarely ever the main event.Let's for a moment imagine a different world. It's a world where women are recognized as helping drive global growth -- today we already know that women represent 40 percent of the global labor force. A world where all women and girls have the chance to live full productive lives -- today we know that too many girls and women still die in childhood and in the reproductive ages. A world where there's equal employment opportunities, equal earnings, equal rights to own land or inherit property.Today in the developing world, it is women who're more likely to be the unpaid family laborers, or farming smaller plots or if they're entrepreneurial, operating in smaller firms and less profitable sectors. It's women who in general in the developing world are earning less than men. It's women who are suffering from pervasive sexual violence, and political, economic, and social disenfranchisement.We know all this from countless studies. Our own World Bank research has shown the lower the income, the more women and girls are disadvantaged, and we know that low income countries lag behind in realizing progress in boosting female school enrolment. Countless more studies from the UN, government agencies and non government organizations all point to persistent segregation, opportunity and earnings gaps between men and women.These studies line our shelves. At women's meetings or international fora we quote them incessantly to one another. But where are the men at these meetings? And is anyone listening? Where are the global agreements? Where is the action? Where is the nexus of change?Some might argue it's happening all around us. They would say just look beyond the sea of men in blue, grey and black, and you'll see the women. In boardrooms? Well only partly. The fact is women have low representation on the boards of large firms -- about 12 percent in Europe, ten percent in the Americas, seven percent in Asia and the Pacific and three percent in the Middle East and North Africa. In Parliaments? Well again the answer is only partly. The fact is women are much less likely to belong to a political party than men. Even in 2010, women ministers were twice as likely to hold a social portfolio than an economic one.There was of course last year's Nobel Peace Prize which was awarded jointly to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman "for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work." There's been improvement in girls' access to primary education, and more countries have signed up to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, though some key countries are noticeably missing.So there is recognition -- but insufficient change. In the World Bank we believe that gender equality is smart economics. We know it to be the case -- and so do many others. We know delivering clean water, sanitation and maternal care helps drive down maternal mortality rates. We know giving women title to land -- as has happened in Ethiopia -- helps narrow the gaps between men and women. We know from countries as diverse as Bangladesh, Brazil, Cote d'Ivoire., Mexico, South Africa and the United Kingdom that increasing the share of household income controlled by women -- either through their own earnings or by cash transfers -- changes spending in ways that benefit children, communities, and societies.The list of what works is long. We also know the list of what's needed is long. We know too that progress for instance in reducing maternal mortality has not kept pace with income growth. Over the past two decades, only 90 countries had a drop of 40 percent or more in maternal mortality rates, while 23 countries showed an increase. Women who run the house in rural areas in the developing world are less likely to get credit. And on a continent like Africa, women are less likely than men to own or use a cell phone.So as we mark International Women's Day, let's consider how we can reshape attitudes and change societal "norms" among men and women about gender. It needs to be done. One of the most disturbing findings from the World Bank's field research in 19 countries in all regions around the globe, showed that for women going about their everyday lives, many of the problems of old still remain, even as new challenges have emerged.Perhaps more telling still, for many women change remains an aspiration reserved for future generations. Not for them, not for now, but hopefully for their daughters or granddaughters. We owe it to those women to take action now. A good start would be for some of those high-level global discussions -- and decisions -- on growth, prosperity, financial systems, and violence, to begin to factor in the potential role of the forgotten fifty percent of the world's population. Let's not leave it till the next generation. Show Less -

Washington DC, February 8, 2012 – The World Bank and Fotopedia, the publisher of popular iOS apps and winner of the Best Tablet App of the Year Crunchies Award, today announced their collaboration on a... Show More + new free app titled “Women of the World” for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. “Women of the World” takes users on an eye-opening tour and educational look into the lives of women all across the world. Through the app, users will encounter women from every corner of the globe and witness their fighting spirit in the face of human, political, and religious events. The app explores the stunning images of a bride at her wedding in Singapore, a woman whose daughter had just been saved from malaria, women minesweeping the fields of Cambodia, nuns in the convents in France, girl-soldiers in Mozambique, which are just a few of the hundreds of moving scenes composing this magnificent sociological study. The app showcases the work of professional photographer Olivier Martel, who traveled to more than 75 countries to assemble these images. “Women of the World” is updated weekly with Visual Stories to provide insight into the lives of women from cultures spanning the globe. Olivier Martel said: “These topics require a persistent but discrete approach, determination, and a lot of patience. This work is about giving women the opportunity to share their hopes or daily struggles, and give them their dignity in a photographic homage that takes the form of a search for beauty.” This collaboration also highlights the World Bank’s #thinkEQUAL campaign that aims to increase awareness of progress and obstacles in gender equality around the globe. Today, more girls go to school and more women receive maternal healthcare than ever, yet only 15 percent of landowners and only one in five lawmakers are women.. “We hope these images inspire people to act,” said Jeni Klugman, the World Bank’s Director of Gender and Development. “Much has improved, but in many parts of the world, women's rights and opportunities remain very constrained. This inequality is very unfair and it is bad economics. It hampers poverty reduction and limits development. The World Bank has major programs to support girls and women to become more educated, gain better access to health care, water, start businesses and access credit. These are becoming an increasingly important aspect of our work around the world.” About “Women of the World”Women of the World is packed with hundreds of professional, moving photos, social media sharing tools, powerful slideshows and wallpapers. Additional features of the app include:A collection of hundreds of photosVisual stories, updated every weekComplete navigation with smart tags, search and interactive mapsInstant SlideshowsFree Wallpapers for your iPhone, iPad or iPod TouchFavorites to create your own personalized photo albumsPhoto sharing via email, Facebook and TwitterThis app requires an Internet connection, WiFi recommended.Pricing & Availability“Women of the World” is available for free for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, in the App Store. About FotopediaWith more than 7 million downloads to date, Fotopedia is the publisher of the Fotopedia Magazine and a suite of iOS apps, including “Fotopedia Heritage”, one of Apple’s Hall of Fame best 50 apps of all times. Fotopedia is also the recent recipient of the 2011 Best Tablet App of the Year Crunchies Award. Fotopedia provides new ways to discover, explore and share the beauty of the world. The company was founded by Jean-Marie Hullot, who was previously CTO at NeXT and CTO of Apple’s Applications Division and a team of Apple veterans. Fotopedia has offices in San Francisco and Paris. About The World BankThe World Bank Group’s goal is to fight poverty. It provides loans and grants to developing countries. The World Bank is helping eliminate persistent gender barriers to accessing quality social services, entering the job market, and building resilience the to shocks and volatility. Our work includes expanding access to family planning and reproductive health services, promoting gender parity in education, providing social safety nets and insurance, and helping people acquire the resources and skills to secure decent jobs and provide for their families.Getting to equal is a smart investment. By closing gender gaps in human development, the Bank is helping developing countries reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), enhance productivity and growth, and promote the well-being of all their people. Show Less -

WASHINGTON, November 28, 2011—As the United Nations conference on climate change opens in South Africa, a new World Bank study demonstrates that women, when fully empowered, can be an important force for... Show More + change as countries and citizens grapple with the impacts of climate change and prepare to adapt to them. World Bank Vice President for Sustainable Development Rachel Kyte said a growing body of evidence shows that women tend to be disproportionately more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change compared to men. Because of their vulnerability – to more frequent and more extreme natural disasters like cyclones, floods, and droughts – it’s vital that women play a more central role in building their communities’ climate resilience. “We are seeing time and time again that when women are empowered to play leadership roles within their communities, the whole community benefits from better preparedness for extreme weather events,” Kyte said. “It's smart economics, smart business, smart planning, and smart design to look at challenges with women’s realities in mind." One example of this comes from Bangladesh. In 1991, Cyclone Gorky killed 140,000 people in that country. Deaths of women outnumbered deaths of men by a ratio of 14 to 1. Through the government’s intensive efforts to increase women’s involvement in preparedness – including providing women-only spaces in storm shelters and getting women more involved as community mobilizers – the number of deaths in a similar cyclone event in 2007, saw the gender gap in mortality rates shrink to 5:1. “Now women are acting as powerful agents of change in Bangladesh,” Kyte said. “Women are getting the message out ahead of cyclones through early warning messages to other women in the community, encouraging them to use cyclone shelters. It’s not only had a dramatic effect in reducing the gender differential in those who are dying in cyclones, but it has also improved cyclone preparedness overall.” In the paper, entitled “Gender and Climate Change: Three Things You Should Know”, the World Bank underscores the importance of gender equality for effective and equitable action on climate change. The study refers to examples in India where poor women in drought-prone states like Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan have improved their social and economic opportunities through self-help groups that have linked together to increase their bargaining power. Over time, these institutional platforms that have grown up around improved livelihoods can be used to build climate resilience, including accessing advice for dealing with drought and building better watershed management structures. The paper’s author, Lead Social Development Specialist Robin Mearns, says the key to ensuring gender equality is ensuring equal access to resources and opportunities for everyone. “Women very often don’t enjoy the same rights or the same socio-economic status as men and that structural disadvantage means that they are often more vulnerable than men to the impacts of the same climate or hazard events,” he said. In developing countries, projects aimed at addressing climate change or improving energy access can have important benefits for women if gender considerations are factored into early planning. For example, a new Bus Rapid Transit project in Lagos, Nigeria has helped cut carbon emissions in that city by 20 percent. A gender analysis undertaken ahead of the project highlighted the need for providing well-lit bus shelters and other safety measures for women to improve their likely use of the system. Now, women are significant users of public transport, improving their participation in the local economy. The paper also highlights the important decisions that billions of women make every day that influence the amount of carbon that is released into the atmosphere. Women’s choices around cooking fuels, cooking technology and the foods to cook all have an important bearing on carbon emissions. “Low-emissions development pathways can be more effective and more equitable where they are designed using a gender-informed approach,” said Mearns. Show Less -

Washington, September 26, 2011—A new report from the World Bank and IFC released today finds that women still face legal and regulatory hurdles to fully participating in the economy. Women, Business... Show More + and the Law 2012: Removing Barriers to Economic Inclusion finds that while 36 economies reduced legal differences between men and women, 103 out of 141 economies studied still impose legal differences on the basis of gender in at least one of the report’s key indicators. The report also identifies 41 law and regulatory reforms enacted between June 2009 and March 2011 that could enhance women’s economic opportunities. Globally, women represent 49.6 percent of the population but only 40.8 percent of the workforce in the formal sector. Legal differences between men and women may explain this gap. The report shows that economies with greater legal differentiation between men and women have, on average, lower female participation in the formal labor force. “Competitiveness and productivity have much to do with the efficient allocation of resources, including human resources,” said Augusto Lopez-Claros, Director, Global Indicators and Analysis, World Bank Group. “The economy suffers when half of the world’s population is prevented from fully participating. It is certainly no surprise that the world’s most competitive economies are those where the opportunity gap between women and men is the narrowest.” The report measures such things as a woman’s ability to sign a contract, travel abroad, manage property, and interact with public authorities and the private sector. In all economies, married women face more legal differentiations than unmarried women. In 23 economies, married women cannot legally choose where to live, and in 29 they cannot be legally recognized as head of household. Every region includes economies with unequal rules for men and women, although the extent of the inequality varies widely. On average, high-income economies have fewer differences than middle- and low-income economies. The Middle East and North Africa have the most legal differences between men and women, followed by South Asia and Africa. In Africa, a notable exception is Kenya, which leads globally with the most gender-parity reforms during the past two years. Regionally, the most improvements in gender parity occurred in Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe and Central Asia. About the Women, Business and the Law Project:The project measures how regulations and institutions differentiate between women and men in ways that may affect women’s incentives or capacity to work or to set up and run a business. Women, Business and the Law objectively measures such legal differentiations on the basis of gender in 141 economies around the world, covering six areas: accessing institutions, using property, getting a job, providing incentives to work, building credit, and going to court. While the project provides a clear picture of gender gaps based on legal differences in each economy, it is a simple snapshot measuring only legal differentiation. It does not capture the full extent of the gender gap, nor does it indicate the relative importance of each aspect covered. For a collection of national legal provisions impacting women's economic status in 183 economies, please visit the Gender Law Library.About the World Bank GroupThe World Bank Group is one of the world’s largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries. It comprises five closely associated institutions: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA), which together form the World Bank; the International Finance Corporation (IFC); the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA); and the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). Each institution plays a distinct role in the mission to fight poverty and improve living standards for people in the developing world. Show Less -

Imagine if a city of almost four million people disappeared every year. A Los Angeles, Johannesburg, Yokohama. It would be hard to miss. Yet it goes largely unnoticed that almost four million girls... Show More + and women “go missing” each year in developing countries when compared to their female counterparts in developed countries. About two-fifths are never born; a sixth die in early childhood, and more than a third die in their reproductive years. High mortality rates are just one of many barriers to equality between men and women, as argued in the World Bank’s new report. Equality is not just the right thing to do. It’s smart economics. How can an economy achieve full potential if it ignores, sidelines or fails to invest in half its population? The world has taken significant steps over the past 25 years toward narrowing the gaps between men and women in education, health and labor markets. Today, girls and boys participate equally in primary education in most developing countries; a third have more girls in secondary school than boys. At the university level, women now outnumber men in more than 60 countries. Women are using their education to participate increasingly in the labor force, diversify their time beyond housework and childcare and shape their communities, economies and societies. Women now make up more than 40 percent of the global labor force — including a large share of the world’s entrepreneurs and farmers. This pace of change has been remarkable: For example, what took the United States 40 years to achieve in increasing girls’ school enrollment, Morocco did in a decade. Other dimensions of equality, however, portray a more disturbing picture. Girls who are poor, live in remote areas or belong to minority groups still cannot attend school as easily as boys. Women are more likely than men to work in low-paying occupations, to farm smaller plots and to manage smaller firms in less profitable sectors. Whether workers, farmers or entrepreneurs, women earn less than men: 20 percent less in Mexico and Egypt; 40 percent less in Georgia, Germany or India; 66 percent less in Ethiopia. Women —especially poor women— have less say over decisions and less control over household resources than men. Women’s voice and representation in society, business and politics is significantly lower than men’s — with little difference between poor and rich countries. Leveling the playing field for women would offer huge potential. Talk to Julian Omalla. This Ugandan business woman had trouble getting a loan in 2007. She was not alone. Ugandan women owned nearly 40 percent of registered businesses, our research showed, but got less than 10 percent of commercial credit. Since Omalla gained access to credit, thanks to Uganda’s DFCU Bank and the World Bank’s private sector arm the IFC, her food and beverage company has thrived. Today it employs hundreds of people. Much more can be done to stop women from being economically marginalized. Equalizing access to fertilizers, and other inputs for female and male farmers, for example, could increase agricultural yields in much of Africa by 11 percent to 20 percent. Removing obstacles to women that block certain sectors and occupations could raise output per worker by 3 percent to 25 percent — depending on the country. Legal reforms that would allow women to own land and businesses, or inherit property, can free them to become economic agents of change. Putting resources in the hands of women has shown to be good not just for them, but also for their children. It increases a child’s chances of survival, health and nutrition and school performance. Empowering women to use their talents and skills can boost countries’ competitiveness and support growth —a valuable, under-used resource in an uncertain global economy. During the 2008 financial crisis, women’s incomes helped keep many families afloat —hence the importance of ensuring that women’s productivity and incomes are not held down by market or institutional barriers, or overt discrimination. This challenge is not just about developing countries. Around the world, one in 10 women will be sexually or physically abused by a partner, or someone she knows, over her lifetime. The World Bank’s new report calls for action in four areas: • addressing human capital issues, like the higher mortality of girls and women, through investment in clean water and maternal care and persistent disadvantages in education through targeted programs; • closing the earning and productivity gaps between women and men — by improving access to productive resources; water and electricity, and childcare; • increasing participation by women in decisions made within households and societies; and • limiting gender inequality across generations, by investing in the health and education of adolescent boys and girls, creating opportunities to improve their lives and offering family planning information. We have seen that focused policy attention can make a difference. Sustainable solutions are best grounded in partnerships including families, the private sector, governments, development agencies and religious and civil society groups. Even in the most traditional societies and poorest villages, I have seen that when women gain opportunities to earn more for their families, it quickly overcomes men’s suspicions — or even initial hostility. But people often need a project that sparks a changed outlook. The poorest countries can accomplish much more with financial help. The World Bank will invest, in part, because the economic payoffs are large. Gender equality is the right thing to do. And it is also smart economics. Robert B. Zoellick is the president of the World Bank Group. Their new report, “World Development Report: Gender Equality and Development,” was released Monday. Show Less -

Despite impressive gains in gender equality, nearly 4 million poor women “missing” each year in developing countriesWASHINGTON, September 18, 2011 – Gender equality matters in its own right but is also... Show More + smart economics: Countries that create better opportunities and conditions for women and girls can raise productivity, improve outcomes for children, make institutions more representative, and advance development prospects for all, says a new World Bank flagship report.The World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development details big strides in narrowing gender gaps but shows that disparities remain in many areas. The worst disparity is the rate at which girls and women die relative to men in developing countries: Globally, excess female mortality after birth and “missing” girls at birth account for an estimated 3.9 million women each year in low- and middle-income countries. About two-fifths are never born due to a preference for sons, a sixth die in early childhood, and over a third die in their reproductive years. These losses are growing in Sub-Saharan Africa, especially in countries hard-hit by HIV/AIDS.“We need to achieve gender equality,” said World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick. “Over the past five years, the World Bank Group has provided $65 billion to support girls’ education, women’s health, and women’s access to credit, land, agricultural services, jobs, and infrastructure. This has been important work, but it has not been enough or central enough to what we do. Going forward, the World Bank Group will mainstream our gender work and find other ways to move the agenda forward to capture the full potential of half the world’s population.”The report cites examples of how countries could gain by addressing disparities between men and women:Ensuring equal access and treatment for women farmers would increase maize yields by 11 to 16 percent in Malawi and by 17 percent in Ghana.Improving women’s access to agricultural inputs in Burkina Faso would increase total household agricultural production by about 6 percent, with no additional resources—simply by reallocating resources such as fertilizer and labor from men to women.The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that equal access to resources for female farmers could increase agricultural output in developing countries by as much as 2.5 to 4 percent.Eliminating barriers that prevent women from working in certain occupations or sectors would have similar positive effects, reducing the productivity gap between male and female workers by one-third to one-half and increasing output per worker by 3 to 25 percent across a range of countries.“Blocking women and girls from getting the skills and earnings to succeed in a globalized world is not only wrong, but also economically harmful,” said Justin Yifu Lin, World Bank Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President, Development Economics. “Sharing the fruits of growth and globalization equally between men and women is essential to meeting key development goals.”The report also notes that the world has made significant progress in narrowing gender gaps in education, health and labor markets over the past 25 years. Disparities between boys and girls in primary education have closed in almost all countries. In secondary education, these gaps are closing rapidly, and in many countries, especially in Latin America, the Caribbean and East Asia, it is now boys and young men who are disadvantaged. Among developing countries, girls now outnumber boys in secondary schools in 45 countries, and there are more young women than men in universities in 60 countries. Similar progress can be seen in life expectancy where women in low-income countries not only outlive men but live 20 years longer than they did in 1960. And in much of the world, gaps in labor force participation have narrowed with over half a billion women having joined the workforce in the last 30 years.Remaining gaps include the lower school enrollments of disadvantaged girls; unequal access for women to economic opportunities and incomes, whether in the labor market, agriculture or entrepreneurship; and large differences in voice between women and men both in households and societies.The report argues that these patterns of progress and persistence in closing gender gaps matters for development policies. Higher incomes help close some gaps, as in education. As schools expand and more jobs open up for young women, parents see clear benefits to educating their girls. But too often, markets and institutions (including social norms around house and care work) combine with household decisions to perpetuate disparities between men and women. As part of this, gender gaps in earnings remain stubbornly unchanged in much of the world.The WDR 2012 calls for action in four areas: 1) addressing human capital issues, such as excess deaths of girls and women and gender gaps in education where these persist; 2) closing earning and productivity gaps between women and men; 3) giving women greater voice within households and societies; and 4) limiting the perpetuation of gender inequality across generations.“Focused domestic public policies remain the key to bringing about gender equality,” said Ana Revenga, WDR Co-Director. “And to be effective, these policies will need to address the root causes of gender gaps. For some problems, as with high maternal mortality, this will require strengthening the institutions that deliver services. For other gaps, as with unequal access to economic opportunities, policies will need to tackle the multiple constraints –in markets and institutions- that keep women trapped in low productivity/low earning jobs.”To ensure that progress on gender equality is sustained, the international community needs to complement domestic policy actions in each of these priority areas. It can also support evidence-based action by fostering efforts to improve data, promote impact evaluation and encourage learning. The report recommends that policymakers focus on the most stubborn gender gaps that rising incomes alone cannot solve. It is by fixing those shortcomings that the payoffs to development are likely to be greatest, and where policies changes will make the most difference.“Development partners can support domestic policies in many ways -- more funding, greater innovation and better partnerships,” said Sudhir Shetty, WDR Co-Director, “Additional financing for clean water and sanitation and maternal services, for instance, will help the poorest countries. More experimentation, systematic evaluation and better gender-disaggregated data can point to ways of improving women’s access to markets. And, partnerships can fruitfully be expanded to include the private sector, civil society groups and academic institutions.” Show Less -

WASHINGTON, March 8, 2011 — World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick today issued the following statement on the centenary celebration of International Women’s Day: “In the hundred years since... Show More + the world first marked International Women’s Day, we have seen tremendous strides in women’s health, education, financial and social empowerment, voting rights, and employment opportunities. But we can and must do more. For our part, the World Bank Group will continue investing in women’s access to jobs, land rights, financial services, agricultural inputs, and infrastructure. Our message to the world is that, “Gender Equality is Smart Economics” and we will further mainstream women’s empowerment into our work. The Bank’s 2012 World Development Report will focus on gender equality dimensions of development. We are also proud to have increased the role of women in the Bank’s Senior Managerial ranks. For the first time ever, two out of three Managing Directors are women, and four out of six of our Regional Vice Presidents are women. We urge public and private partners to join us in the work to open more doors of opportunity to girls and women for the benefit of all.” Show Less -